1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic dictionary apparatus for recognizing a written work pattern as a letter series by using an image input function, and looking up a related information, such as a translation of the recognized letter series.
2. Description of the Background Art
Various electronic dictionary apparatuses have recently been developed. Most typically, the conventional electronic dictionary apparatus has a configuration in which a word or a phrase is entered through a key typing, and information related to it, such as its translation, means, related idiomatic phrases etc., is looked up.
For example, the electronic dictionary apparatus disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 53-56925 (1978) has a configuration which is capable of looking up homophones. Another example is the electronic dictionary apparatus disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 57-113177 (1982), which has a configuration which is capable of looking up synonyms and antonyms. Yet another example is the electronic dictionary apparatus disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 54-34653 (1979) which has a configuration which includes a function for outputting the pronunciation of the word to be looked up in the form of the synthesized voice sound.
However, in these conventional electronic dictionary apparatuses, the word to be looked up must be inputted by key typing, so that they were not quite convenient to use.
In order to improve on this problem of the convenience in use, there had been propositions of the electronic dictionary apparatus incorporating a letter recognition device, such as those disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 57-10876 (1982) and the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 57-150874 (1982). In this type of the electronic dictionary apparatus, any word pattern written on a manuscript can be read in by a hand scanner as the letter pattern series, and the dictionary looks it up by using the letter code series obtained by recognizing the entered letter pattern series.
However, in this type of the electronic dictionary apparatus, it is necessary to input the letter pattern series for a work or phrase to be looked up one by one, so that is has been rather difficult to expand the usage of the dictionary beyond the ordinary dictionary looking up of a work to find out its meaning.
Moreover, the capability of the electronic dictionary apparatus itself is limited to only recognition of the input pattern series and the looking up of the obtained letter code series, and not extended to the level of realizing the relationships among a plurality of input pattern series. As a consequence, such as electronic dictionary apparatus could hardly be useful in the intelligence processes of a much higher level which utilizes the relationship among the plurality of the input pattern series, such as context information.
Furthermore, actual use of this type of electronic dictionary apparatus inevitably takes a mode in which the user first finds out the portion to be looked up on the manuscript, then inputs the letter pattern series of the relevant portion by using the hand scanner to have that portion looked up, and finally obtains the result of the looking up. At that point, the obtained result of the looking up must be either copied over to the manuscript by hand or else memorized, so that the user is forced to carry out some extra activity associated with the use of the electronic dictionary on the manuscript.
In order to reduce the task of the user to copy down the result of the looking up on the manuscript there have been electronic dictionary apparatuses incorporating a printer device for outputting a print out of the result of the looking up, such as those disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 57-29181 (1982) and the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 1-26271 (1989). However, even such an electronic dictionary apparatus with a printer is incapable of actively supporting the thinking of the user during its use.
It is also possible to realize that the electronic dictionary apparatus in which the entire document information on the manuscript can be inputted. In this type of the electronic dictionary apparatus, the user can check the input document information, as well as the result of the looking up on the display screen. This feature can be considered as an active support of the user's thinking by the electronic dictionary apparatus because it encourages thinking activity to take place as the user observes the display screen throughout the use of the electronic dictionary apparatus. For example, this feature can be quite beneficial in using the electronic dictionary apparatus in the translation process. Namely, the translation process can be carried out by using a machine translation apparatus such as those disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 56-42880 (1981) and the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 60-59482 (1985). However, the translation obtained by using such a machine translation apparatus is hardly perfect, so that the human post editorial process is indispensable for a high quality translation, and the electronic dictionary apparatus can be useful assisting tool in such a post editorial process. An example of the electronic dictionary apparatus designed as the translation assisting tool is disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 61-88365 (1986), which has a desirable feature of displaying the original sentence, its translation found by the dictionary looking up, and the translated sentence.
Now, in the electronic dictionary apparatus capable of image input and letter recognition, it is desirable to adopt an operation mode in which the letter pattern series for a work is selected from the input image according to the command by the user, which is then recognized an used as a key word in the dictionary looking up. For this reason, it is indispensable for this type of the electronic dictionary apparatus to have a display for displaying the input image, and a function enabling the user to select arbitrary pattern series for the displayed image. However, in the machine translation apparatus, the original sentence is given as the letter code series alone, and a function for displaying the input image is not incorporated because incorporation of the image input function and the letter recognition function is not considered at all. Moreover, in such a machine translation result is not capable of input by key typing, so that the post editorial operation such as the addition, modification, and deletion cannot be applied to the translation result.
As for the display of the input image and the selection of the pattern series from the displayed image, there has been a proposition disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 1-169673 d(1989). In whcih, the pattern series is selected on the displayed input image by the command from the user and then recognized. However, in selecting the letter pattern series, the input image is displayed as it is inputted, so that the extraction of the letter pattern series has been difficult of the case in which the letter pattern series to be selected is spread over a plurality of line sin a form of a hyphenated word or an idiomatic phrase including a plurality of words.
Now, because the words which the user selects as the words to be looked up are presumably unknown to the user, so that the result of the dictionary looking up can be utilized for learning by the user. An example of the electronic dictionary apparatus incorporating a function to support learning by the user is disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 55-147760 (1980), in which the words looked up by the user are memorized in a form which can be used later on as so called word cards. Another example of such an electronic dictionary apparatus is those disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 57-29181 (1982) and the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 63-177263 (1988), in which the results of the dictionary looking up is complied and outputted in a form of a personal check word list useful for later learning by the suer. Yet another example of such an electronic dictionary apparatus is that disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 57-38485 (1982), which incorporates a function to support the learning of the pronunciation of Chinese characters.
However, in such an electronic dictionary apparatus, each key word can be treated only as it is, without taking into account the context in which the key word appeared, the relationship with respect to the other key work, and the background information related to the field relevant to the text.
Thus, the various conventionally known electronic dictionary apparatuses are still unsatisfactory in the aspects of actively supporting the thinking activity of the user and its effective and efficient utilization.